Lahat ng Kabanata ng Solid Gold (Unseen Enemy 8): Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

John ‘Griff’ Griffin made himself a third cup of instant coffee, and headed back to his desk to go over the case paperwork one more time. His meeting with his boss and the new client was in less than twenty minutes, and he was determined to be ready for it.He sat, sipped, shuffled the mountain of papers. Griff knew that he knew this back-and-forth – he’d spent the weekend poring over it, after all – but if there was one thing that he’d learned in his time in the navy, it was that you were never too prepared. That thinking had saved his life, and more than once.Absently, he rubbed at the long, thick scar that ran the length of the left side of his neck. It was ugly and it was bright purple, but he was covered in enough scars to not be self-conscious about it. In fact, he cherished and valued it in a way, cherished and valued it as much as he did his dog tags from his time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like them, he treated that rough, raised flesh as a reminder of just what happened when

“Ms. Burns.” Dallas tilted his head at her, his voice and eyes both warm. “You brought the pictures?”“I did.” Leeza Burns set her cell phone on the conference room table with shaking hands. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t send them to you before now, Mr. Foreman. I just couldn’t… I don’t know. I wanted to show them to you in person, I guess.”“I totally understand your thinking, and please call me Dallas.” He gave her his trademark charming grin, and then indicated at Griff. “And Mr. John Griffin here prefers to be called ‘Griff’.”“Dallas and Griff,” she repeated. “Leeza.”“Leeza,” Griff said. “What pictures are we talking about? Are these new ones? Ones that ain’t in the file?”Leeza fidgeted a bit with her blouse button. “I – I took some cell pictures of Claire Worthington.”Griff’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean here in Denver, right?”“Yes.” She exhaled, hard. “Dallas says that you’ve read the reports, so you know that I saw her on the street. Just walking around Denver, like she was a

“So… why is she so happy?” Leeza asked. “Why is she wandering the streets looking like she’s the most ecstatic woman to inhabit planet Earth?” She didn’t wait for a response; she went right on ahead and answered. “It’s because her marriage is just fine, really. And because she has one hell of a back-up plan and crash cushion, one that keeps her safe, and I’m willing to lay every penny that I have that she has full access to some sizable offshore accounts.”“Mmm-hmmmm.” Griff sighed. “Go on.”"Maybe she can’t touch ‘em now, because of the heat and because she isn’t allowed to leave the country, but the feds told me and so I know for a fact that she sold quite a bit of her family jewelry, and so she has a nice chunk of change that she’s living on. She can wait a while to hit the payload. I figure that she’s thinking that, yeah, things are shit right now, but she sees that pot of gold waiting at the end of the dark tunnel – sorry to mix my metaphors, but you get what I’m saying – and so

The least the woman could do was sprout moles and warts and zits all over her face, and get haggard and wrinkled. Griff was a big believer that a person’s outer appearance was a reflection of their inner beauty and kindness, that a person’s nasty inner persona was clearly visible on their face and body. So, by that logic, Claire Worthington should have been one seriously ugly woman. The fact that she wasn’t felt unfair and deeply wrong, and Griff decided to just go right on ahead and take that personally.Yeah, this one was personal to him and the sooner he admitted that, the better. Sure, Wilbur had scammed other rich people and large businesses out of their money, but he hadn’t ignored or overlooked the average Joe and Jane at all. People like Leeza’s Dad, people like Griff’s parents – hell, people like Griff – had been in his crosshairs too. And boy, had he taken aim and fired.Direct hits, man. Way, way too many of them.“OK, so.” Leeza’s voice trembled slightly, and the men focus

At eight-oh-two the next morning, Griff was sitting in The Web Café with his warm knit hat pulled down low over his forehead, nursing a strong black coffee and staring out the window at the grayest, coldest early-February that he could recall in recent memory. He was no stranger to harsh winters and heavy snowfalls, of course, but he was taken aback at the wind that whipped on down the Rocky Mountains. Before moving to Denver, he hadn’t really experienced a wind that sliced your cheeks like a knife, and froze the air in your lungs, and cut through four layers of clothing like they were made of tissue paper.He was just wondering why the hell Claire Worthington would choose Colorado instead of, say, California, when the café door opened, and in strolled the woman herself. Griff didn’t react, of course, didn’t so much as glance her way as she stood in the door and stomped her boots to loosen the snow clinging to them – but he was hyper-aware of her every movement.She took off her mitte